


A Full Poor Cell

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Fanny och Alexander | Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Genre: Angst, Antisemitism, Assisted Suicide, Body Horror, Fantasy, Gen, References to Shakespeare, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:08:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28905372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: Both Elsa Bergius and Ismael Retzinsky exist on the periphery, exist behind doors. An attempt to give greater depth to the character of Elsa Bergius, someone Bergman's film does not treat kindly or dwell on at any great length. Also, a further exploration of the mysterious/mystical connection between her and the Jacobi household.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	A Full Poor Cell

_Do not open the door to anyone,_ they say.

Beyond the door, a witch rests on the gate, leaning idly with a basket at her shoulder, her wares lusciously alluring.

Beyond the door are Bluebeard’s wives.

(The witch is no witch-woman.)

(Bluebeard’s bride is no bride.)

Elsa Bergius shuts her eyes, her eyes are heavy, and in their heaviness, her hair falls like bounties of black grapes, unbunched, bride-unbound…

She stirs. Blenda stands before her, wax-white as the glint of a paraffin lamp, far-off and unfeeling…

Blenda’s smile is like a grimace that gives her guilt.

Her youth becomes a dream, but not of hers… Blenda does the dreaming, if Blenda can be said to dream.

The dark flow of the winepress becomes the flow of hair by which a bride is drawn, blood of dark purple mingling with the jet cascade, hanging limp after her limbs stop jolting… Bluebeard’s hand, no longer needing to haul her or pin her down, tears away… tearing hair with it…

Elsa becomes bride-bloodstained under Blenda’s gaze, but Elsa has seen brides come and never go, unless hacked apart, hacked frozen-clinging from the frigid reaches of the river…

They call her bride, victim of her own temptation, enticed by her own curiosity, victim of men with beards of blue but to blame herself for her own disease, corrosion of the body that comes from the indulgence of youth – but outside of their eyes, Elsa knows who she is.

She is no Bluebeard-bride. She is the old woman kept in the cellar of the house of the robber-bridegroom. She has seen brides plied with wines, wines of white, wines of red, wines of yellow, by the eaters of human flesh.

She has – seen – her pale eyes wide as his eyes that do not sleep, heavy as his eyes that are heavily lidded – and when she sleeps, her only lullaby is the birdsong from above: “Turn back, turn back, young maiden dear, / ’Tis a murderer’s house you enter here,” that her nephew would call the twang of her conscience in regret of her own excess, but Elsa knows better – knows her nephew as she knows his sister – and her own sister – knows the smiles that show teeth fresh-picked-clean of human flesh… the pious smiles of subtle resentment and resentful dignity – and she hears –

Everything. Every murmur under every breath. Every sigh of fatigue. Every time Mrs. Tander grumbles while spooning her gruel. Every Justina-whisper. Every half-sentence her sister speaks when she feels she is out of earshot, every argument between her nephew and his bride beyond her walls… They speak freely in her presence, outside her presence, for they all assume everything is outside her presence. What is she, after all, but a corpse? They tire of her when they are but a few feet from her, and were tiring before they even began to turn…

( _Her hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against hers…_ )

She shuts her eyes and every ache keeps her awake, every ache in her body… and in theirs.

She is sick. He is sick.

Contamination-communion, disease-dream dreamscape, although one of them does not sleep, she dreams for him…

They are the invalids, kept behind doors.

He dreams her dreams, his dreams, Isak’s dreams, Aron’s – Aron, who does not sleep except when he does, wide-eyed – Aron’s fantasist-cynicism of papier-mâché, Alexander’s dark dreams, dark-eyed, sullen-eyed Alexander, who always hung back sullenly from her, their contempt is mutual, not just for each other, for her nephew – a hollow laugh would belch from her belly if she were wont to laugh – she dreams Ismael’s dreams for him, he who does not sleep, she helps him to dream, presses a cool cloth to his boyish brow, a shred of her own windings, and in return, a song without words reaches out to her from Ismael’s mermaid-throat, moonlight-mingling with the birdsong beyond the cellar door…

Mummy-dust clouds her air, catching the moonlight, mist of myrrh… Still, she is no mummy – only mummified in thought, entombed here in eyesight, although here in her tomb, she can thread her body with gold, strands of gold hanging upon the hill of her belly, from her hoar arms, baubles of ruby-studded gold protruding from the wrappings of her shroud. If her robber-bridegroom-tomb-robber kinsman can strip her to the grey, at least she can bedeck herself like a pharaoh of yore, Hatshepsut-false-bearded, in her mind’s eye.

Her robber-bridegroom kinsman would admonish her for her woman’s vanity, vanity that is the ruin of womankind…

( _Wild ass of a woman._ )

Wild and restless, for _anything_ is restlessness if it perturbs their rest, perturbs their pious performance, bishop’s-benignity…

Ismael grew wild when his parents died…

…and, in his wildness, set roaring war between red flame from the heart of the earth and the Russian frost, the howl of St. Petersburg’s winter-winds screaming all for him, in his voice, until his voice was in all ears and he was drowning souls to deafness…

He made men mad that winter, swaddled them in straitjackets, sent them gibbering into asylums, braining themselves against the walls to batter down the music of his voice within their heads…

( _That is not metaphor, but you can call it so if it comforts you…_ )

His music is a mellifluous hum in Elsa’s head, it melts the robber-bridegroom’s bird’s refrain…

He was a child when his parents died, a white-eyed child with fair hair and a maidenly face – Luciferian, the Christians might have called it – did call it, like something wood-carven by William Blake.

He and Aron spirited away to Sweden, in the care of Isak – Uncle Isak, with his Noh masks upon his walls, with his mask upon his face, always fixing tight the mask when going out among these Lutherans, for survival’s sake – _Give people what they expect. Give them what they do not expect and heaven knows what they may do_ – assimilationist gentility, every stereotype a survival tactic – and still, he may not survive, Ismael muses, every evil thought of every human being in this city bleeding into his ear, all the Lutheran antisemitism envenoming his mind, all the voices screaming in his head what they will not scream to Isak’s face…

The bishop screams to Isak’s face. Elsa, who absorbs all things to her as Ismael does, hears him from behind her walls. She has no love for the old Jew – and for this, Ismael has no love for her – but there is mutuality in their isolation, in their being named aberration – and she feels this gropingly, some petty part of her heart smiling at her nephew’s fury, the feeling boiling up from the tubes of her heart and for once, as the old man tips his hat gracefully before the bishop’s young bride, her face as white as Elsa’s own, her pale lips forming a smile – as her husband stands staggered, impotent before Isak, bested but not knowing by what – the Jew’s triumph becomes almost Elsa’s own.

Almost.

Mutuality is only mutuality, after all.

_Enemy of my enemy_ and all that…

It becomes another bauble to weave into her wrappings, a golden asp with eyes of jewels, its fangs delicately graven – not by goldsmiths – by her – she is both overseer and architect here – the upkeep of the tomb is hers, as the resting in it is hers – although she did not place herself here – other hands did that, her sister’s hands, her nephew’s hands, her niece’s, the old cook, the maidservants with their soap-sallow hands – its fangs are sharp as needles, to sink into the bishop’s throat, sink into his flesh, for he is a thing of flesh as she is – a treasure with which to treasure this moment, keep it captured – keep it _hers_ – when it is not hers. It is Isak’s.

But she graves the gold carefully, makes of him a trinket for herself.

She buries the serpent deep, deep within her folds, ashen folds wound about her, grey folds of flesh, until its fangs find her, golden fangs she wrought for herself from another’s pain, to bite her nephew, but they bite her too – _Thou calledst me dog before thou hadst a cause. / But since I am a dog, beware my fangs._ – they sting… She runs the fangs downward from the crease above her belly, for any sting is sensation, hooking her navel, tearing downward, opening her stomach, spilling forth rubies of gore… She unwinds her intestines, holds them in her white hands stained red with blood, gazes at them clinically, other organs spilling forth, the crimson running down…

She continues tearing, strewing more rubies from the treasure-box, this treasure-box of feminine purity that they always told her she had profaned, so what matters, more profanation?

_“Vesalius produced the first authoritative anatomy book; it is astonishing in its detail, macabre in its single-mindedness. This Anatomy of Birth, a second volume, is even more disturbing and heretical. It concentrates on the mysteries of birth. It is full of descriptive drawings of the workings of the human body which, when the pages open, move and throb and bleed. It is a banned book that queries the unnecessary processes of ageing, bemoans the wastages associated with progeneration, condemns the pains and anxieties of childbirth, and generally questions the efficiency of God.”_

Ismael watches her watching herself with a mixture of pity and contempt. Perhaps he finds it ironic to see her painting the air with blood after he has so long heard Christians in their hearts and on their lips bear false witness against his people, blame them for blood-rites, condemn them for the slaughter of their children (two children are come to Isak’s in refuge, refuge from the blood-rituals of the bishop that the bishop calls love, the bloody scourge – ח ויקם מלך חדש על מצרים אשר לא ידע את יוסף – we know well the sting of the lash, come and break bread with us – an empathy arises in Ismael – he is empathy incarnate – empathy is so different than mutuality – an empathy for these children, seeking shelter through the long night…) The bloodiness that governs the minds of the goyim escapes him, although he has overheard their thoughts since birth…

Ismael crouches over her now like a succubus, like an incubus… imposing an image of herself on her as she imposed an image of Isak onto Isak – an image of herself that the bishop imposed upon her, that Blenda and Henrietta imposed upon her, that her family all upheld and that she bleedingly peels at – an image of indulgence, consumed by her own excesses and lusts, hagridden by disease – it is a cruel image, a _false_ image – but her own image of Isak has been no less false, has been _as cruel_ – and Ismael turns that cruelty back on her, sewing her belly back up after stuffing her insides back inside – he does not ascribe to Isak’s philosophy of gentility to the Gentiles for survival’s sake – if they name him demon, demon he shall be, if at least it means that he can raise a glass to these hypocrites, a gold-gilt page from A Book of Mirrors…

Yet, Empathy Incarnate cannot eradicate Empathy from Itself.

He presses a pale hand to her brow, wipes the wax-ooze from her face.

His seraph-lips kiss her forehead, this beautiful androgyne, and that phrase _beautiful androgyne_ speaks to she as well as he.

He lifts his weight from her and she can breathe, breathe as she has breathed in days, in months, in years, free to continue the upkeep of her entombment if she wishes it, to impose upon herself what Edvard has always imposed upon her…

Edvard…

She sees her nephew through Ismael’s eyes, weighed down heavier than her – he who weighed her so heavily down until she could only mummify herself in her nephew’s image, in the bishop’s sight… he who always stood erect in example of a man, slumped like a puppet with no Hand to hold the strings – no hand, save hers –

Hers.

Free.

If she wishes it.

She raises her hand to the paraffin lamp. Edvard moved it closer to her earlier this evening…

Edvard…

Its heat pulses beneath her palm.

Pulse.

Heartbeat.

Blood pumping.

Blood-movement.

Her movement – and Edvard, prone…

In the incorporal air, she sees Ismael glistening, Alexander beside him.

Alexander seems afraid.

_Good._

Let him fear.

She’s never particularly liked that boy…

And knows that boy has never liked her…

But there is mutuality in malice – and all three feel it – 

She casts the lamp to the ground.

Feels the blood coursing through her hand.

Lifeblood. Life. To do with what she wishes.

Her fingers fan with flames…

_It is 5:00 in the morning, and the sun has just risen._

_The doors are thrown open._

_No, wait._

_First a scream, a horrible scream, echoes through the house. A shapeless burning figure moves across the floor, screaming…_

**Author's Note:**

> The passage describing the fictional Anatomy of Birth comes from Peter Greenaway. I felt it fit alongside my allusions to The Tempest and well reflected Elsa's bitter state of mind.
> 
> The line in Hebrew is Exodus 1:8.
> 
> Maybe it's because I'm trans (it's definitely because I'm trans), but I've been fascinated by the androgynous portrayals of Ismael and the bishop's aunt for a long time - especially Ismael, since he emerges as such a powerful and ultimately positive force within the narrative. The portrayal of Elsa Bergius makes me more uncomfortable, but because of that discomfort and uncertainty, I wanted to write something that affirmed her own agency more than the text of the film does and gave her greater layers of nuance. I say, "layers of nuance," because I didn't want to romanticize her or shave away the rough edges from her. Given the atmosphere of 1907 Sweden as portrayed in the film (especially the Vergerus household), I don't doubt that she would be anti-Semitic - and I wanted to hold her accountable for that the same way the film holds the bishop accountable for his racism.
> 
> I loved writing Ismael and exploring his attitude towards the world. His cosmic strength, his breaking of the binary of male and female, is important to me. I've read various interpretations of him (some that demonize him because the Fifth Act of the film is literally called Demons - these interpretations invariably insinuate something unsettling about his gender presentation and these interpretations, in my opinion, suck) and some that sympathize with him (I remember Roger Ebert describing how "the mad Ismael calmly and sweetly shows Alexander how everything will be resolved.") To me, if Ismael is to be considered a demon or a fallen angel in the context of the film, I don't think that's a bad thing. This is a film, after all, where the ultimate evil is represented by a dogmatic Christian righteousness - that deems anything outside of itself as Evil. So if Ismael, who exists as an "other" not just in gendered terms but as a Jewish person in 1907 Sweden - is seen as a demon in the eyes of that Christian dogmatism, then that speaks in his favor. Good to evil seems evil, as Ray Bradbury would say. 
> 
> Thank you, anyone who takes the time to read this. I know I'm in a fandom of one (myself), but I love Fanny and Alexander deeply and it is a pleasure to explore its depths in this way. Thank you, and if you should pass this way, review!


End file.
